


The Breath Comes Out

by Barkour



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-17
Updated: 2013-11-17
Packaged: 2018-01-01 19:35:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1047770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Barkour/pseuds/Barkour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Spoilers for Thor 2: The Dark World.) Sif must come to terms with a very alive Loki.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Breath Comes Out

In a fortnight Asgard had lost her queen, her second son, and then, of breaking heart, her king: the Allfather passed not in battle or on his throne, but in the bed he had shared with Frigga. And Asgard knew sorrow, a great sorrow, for all that now remained was Thor, the first and last son of this noble house.

Then, from the hills: Loki. Wicked Loki, lost Loki, Loki who had died on that dark world that Thor should live. Thus was Loki found, with blood on his cheeks and fever in his eyes; and he was taken back to the palace by the hunters who found him, for where else could he be taken? If he had sinned, he had also sacrificed, and besides, Asgard had little else.

On the fourth night, well after Thor had seen him, after the holy workers of spirit and flesh had tended him, another went to him. He was sitting up in bed with a book open in his lap and his long fingers spread across the page. A circlet of rose gold rested on his brow; this, for the fever.

"Do you mean to sulk in the door all night?" he asked, turning the page. "Or do you need my permission to come in? You've never wanted it before."

Her throat tightened, her jaw too. She'd walked steadily through the dark passages reserved for servants, paths she'd learned with Loki and with Thor for a child's purposes. Neither fear slowed her nor rage hastened her; then at the threshold to his room she had stopped with her hand on the frame of the door, staring in at Loki with gold in his hair and his nose in a book.

Sif closed the door behind her, not gently.

At this, he pursed his lips. Still he would not lift his head.

"I _am_ reading."

She advanced on the bed. The light, set beside his elbow upon the little desk, cast her shadow long and shivering behind her.

"Forgive me." She bit it off, like tough meat. "I'd not realized you were so busy."

"As you can see." His thumb coasted down the length of the page. "I'm so very busy."

Sif slapped her hand down upon the book. The pages fluttered. It fell, thumping, to the bedspread, a fine thing embroidered with gold thread in the pattern of stars.

"Oh, now," he said, "was that really necessary?" and Loki tipped his head and looked up at her with his brow wrinkled just over his nose.

"I would speak with you," she said lowly, and the steadiness of her voice calmed her.

"You are speaking with me. Among other things." 

He reached for his book, but he did not meet it; she'd caught his sleeve and then his wrist, and she pulled his arm back. Loki let her do this. His eyes dropped. Her knuckles stood out, her grip tightening. His wrist was cold, belying fever.

"You were dead."

"But now I'm not."

"A guard found your body," she said through her teeth. His skin was cool beneath her palm, but her chest was hot. "He saw you."

Loki gestured with his free hand to his chest. The delicately woven healer's tunic clung to his shoulders, his breast, but the long climb of his neck was exposed.

"Clearly he was mistaken."

"Thor held you in his arms as you died," said Sif, and she was no longer steady; she'd begun to shout. Her fingers dug into his arm. She held it out, away from him. The back of his first finger brushed her shoulder.

His face tightened.

"I remember very little," he said. "But I do remember Thor. And..." He touched his hand to his chest, then lower still, to the place where the blade must have pierced. Where it had run through him.

Before they had found Loki, Thor had spoken to Sif, alone in some dark corner.

"He died to kill the one who murdered our mother," Thor had said to her, "but he died to save me as well."

She had not blinked. She had been steady then.

"And he is dead," she'd said. "Truly, he is dead?"

Thor did not hide his grief from her; he had never hid such things. His eyes were dark.

"Yes."

She touched Thor's shoulder, lightly. She had meant to do it lightly. Then her fingers curled in the pinned fabric of his cape.

"He has 'died' before."

"He will not return this time," Thor had said, and Sif had let her hand fall away. 

Now she clasped Loki's wrist so tightly the bones bit at her, and she said only, "How?"

Loki laughed and tipped his head again. The curling ends of his black hair brushed his naked throat. Nearly all his hair curled, as if he had indeed, as he'd claimed, walked the dusty expanse of the dark world till he'd remembered the way home again, without the usual concern for his appearance.

"How what, precisely? Be more specific."

She drew a harsh breath through her nose and then, her mouth hurting her, she smiled as patently falsely as he pretended to smile genuinely.

"Tell me," she said, "how it is you could return, from death in Thor's arms."

"Really, Sif," he said. The corners of his mouth curled more. His brow arched. If she weren't pulling him up from the backboard, he would have reclined comfortably against it, she thought. She'd known this expression long, so many years; it had been her companion since some time shortly after they had first met, the second prince with his quick tongue and Sif with dirt forever under her fingernails.

He went on:

"My dear lady Sif." He covered her hand on his wrist with his other hand. His thumb brushed, so very softly, the curve of her wrist. "I could never deprive you of your claim on my life."

Her jaw ached. Her chest ached, too. The tips of his fingers swept up the expanse of her arm to the end of her cropped sleeve, belled there at her elbow.

"Your father is dead," she said cruelly.

"So I'm told," he said. His lashes were low; they obscured his eyes. "If I could have but been with him..."

"You would have driven in a knife."

Loki's hand slipped down her arm, down again to her wrist, her hand.

"Do you trust me so little?" he asked the back of her hand.

"I don't trust you at all," she said.

Loki smiled and, bending so the glimmering healer's tunic made soft noise like a rainfall, he kissed her first knuckle and then the second. Once, as children, they had fought and she had split those knuckles open on his nose.

"The lady Sif is very wise," he said, "but not very kind," and he turned his face up to her.

She'd broken his nose that day so long ago, but Frigga had mended it so that the break could not even be felt. Loki had forced Sif to run her finger down the bridge of his nose, to feel for herself how smooth the bone and how fleeting her mark on him, and he had smiled at her.

He did not smile now.

"Thor said he would not be king while Odin lived," said Sif. She was thinking how thin Loki's face had grown. "The Allfather granted him stay from the throne."

"Are you asking if I mean to be king?"

The little light caught in his face. Shadows filled the hollow of his throat. His eyes were very green, and he stared at her as if he'd forgotten how to blink.

"I am saying I will watch you," said Sif evenly. "Where you go, I go. If you seek to do ruin to Asgard, I will not allow you."

She released his wrist. A muscle in her hand twinged, held too tightly and then let go. 

Loki studied her, and his lip creased then eased again. The black sweep of his lashes dropped over his eyes and rose. The corner of his mouth turned in on itself.

"So noble," he said. "I take it you'll be staying the night?"

Sif's lips tightened, and Loki, leaning forward, touched her ear, where a length of brown hair laid against her cheek.

"Never fear, brave warrior," he said, "I shall be the perfect gentleman."

"You would do well to keep your hands to yourself then," she said, catching his hand.

He twisted so that his fingers cupped her wrist.

"You needn't push yourself," he said. Some deprecation leaked into his voice. "What evil could I get about while I'm bedridden?"

The tunic shone. The circlet resting in his curling, dark hair gleamed. The line of his nose was so smooth.

"You should be dead," she said.

He smiled at her, a pinched sort of smile. He looked down his nose at her as he did it.

"I'm very sorry to disappoint."

She put her hand on his breast. For a moment, only a moment, the look on his face cracked. Some other, startled, lost thing showed through. Her hand dropped. She felt at the place where he had been speared, as neatly as a fish.

"You fell from the Bifröst," she said.

"I landed," he said. He'd regained his composure. He always did. 

"You were run through."

Distantly, she felt his heart beating. The blood coursed through him. The breath came in and went out. When she pressed her palm to the wound, somewhere beneath all that wrapping, the breath went out faster. The heart beat harder.

"It missed most of the really necessary bits."

"I would that it had taken your tongue," she said, her own tongue bitter with it.

"No matter," he said, as if it weren't. "You'll be with me next time, won't you, dear, sacrificial Sif? I only ask that you be quick about it."

Dear, he'd called her. Again.

She leaned into him. His mouth was warmer than his wrist. The breath came in swiftly. She pushed her hand against his gut and turned her head so that when the breath went out, it went to her.

The hard line of his teeth. The dryness of his fevered lips. How he smelled of salt. The tickling brush of his curling hair against her cheek. She'd a moment, no more. No more. Only that. She would not allow herself more.

He exhaled again and his lips moved beneath hers. He rose from the backboard, coming to her, pressing against the hand at the lowest curving rib. The tunic tinkled again, a rushing sound of rain, and her name rolled from his tongue into her mouth, down her throat. Sif, he'd said. Sif. Only that.

Sif broke the kiss.

His lips were reddened. They stood out from his ashen skin, though color had come to his cheeks. He wasn't blinking again; then he kissed her, and he looked at her as he did it. She looked too, even as she touched her hand to his jaw and her fingers dug in. He made a noise, just a little one, breath catching in his throat, and then his dry, cracked lips parted.

That damned, quick tongue of his. He tasted her teeth. She'd never liked him to win. She pushed back, and his eyelashes fluttered, only once. It was enough. She listened, but he did not whisper her name again; he whispered nothing, but breathed out into her again and again as her hand pressed up from his wounded gut to his breast where his cold heart kept on beating.

Loki swallowed. His lips worked. Sif smoothed her thumb over his cheek, his hard, bony cheek. She'd a vivid memory of how her blood had looked on his face, blood from the knuckles she'd opened on his nose; but he was pale now, pale and thin and looking newly of death.

She breathed out, her breath on his chin. Sif stared at him, stared as he had stared at her. She thought she knew what that pinched thing in his face had been.

She tightened her hand on his jaw.

"If you betray Asgard," she said.

A smile flickered across his mouth, as lightly as a knife. 

"I'd want no one but you to cut my throat," said Loki just as lightly, and then he reached for her and his clever mouth was open to her and he was, for now, in her hands; and he did not run from her. The book fell to the floor. She threw it there. Loki did not argue against this. Nor did he argue when she stayed the night after all.

**Author's Note:**

> For Rawles, who is as lovely as she is understanding, haha. Thank you. <3
> 
> Discussing how to manage Sif/Loki after _Thor 2_ , we decided Loki would fake Odin's death and then orchestrate his own miraculous return from death. While writing this up for a very silly Tumblr post, I ... wound up writing fic. So, there you go.


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